Workers' Compensation Law Commons^™

The Class Of Injuries Test: A Unifying Proposal To Determining Duty, Proximate Cause, And Superseding Cause In Negligence Claims, Judge Leonard J. Feldman, Julia Doherty

Seattle University Law Review

While there seems to be universal agreement that liability in tort cannot be unlimited, there is widespread disagreement regarding the various tests that courts utilize to limit such liability. We assume here that breach can be proven: the defendant failed to conduct themself in accordance with the salient standard of conduct (for example, failure to exercise reasonable care under all the circumstances). In the ensuing litigation, the court and jury are asked to decide several issues that each limit liability for negligence. Here, we focus on three oft-debated issues: duty, proximate cause, and superseding cause. The tests for each are …

Foreseeability And Duty In Washington Negligence Law: Leaving The Road Less Traveled By, Leo Linder

Seattle University Law Review

Washington negligence law is a confusing labyrinth of foreseeability that not even Ariadne’s string could guide plaintiffs out of. Foreseeability is implicated in four distinct analyses, several of which overlap considerably. Doctrines that were once questions of law are now questions of fact, and vice versa. Something needs to change.

Washington has taken the novel approach of bifurcating the duty element into two parts—duty’s mere existence, which is a question of law for the court to determine; and duty’s scope, which is a question of fact handed off to the jury to determine. Foreseeability impacts both of these assessments, but …

Lhwca Section 905(B) And Scindia: The Confused Tale Of A Legal Pendulum, Thomas C. Galligan, Brian C. Colomb

Louisiana Law Review

The article presents the U.S. Supreme Court case Scindia Steam Navigation Co., Ltd. v. De Los Santos to discuss Section 905(b) of the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act (LHWCA), which provided negligence as a course of action in advancing workers' compensation claims.

Equitable Estoppel & Workers' Compensation Immunity: Why Litigants And The Courts Are Getting Ahead Of Themselves, Neil A. Ambekar

Florida A & M University Law Review

Every U.S. jurisdiction has created a separate body of law to address workplace injuries - the workers’ compensation scheme. These no-fault systems provide employees injured on the job lost wages and medical benefits. It also immunizes employers from negligence claims arising out of most workplace accidents. This article discusses a growing phenomenon in Florida’s workers’ compensation scheme, the use of estoppel to negate employer immunity. This article lays out the various theories of estoppel—primarily judicial and equitable—that may be asserted in the context of on-thejob injury litigation. This article goes on to explain why Florida courts should refrain from application …

An Analysis Of Brown V. National Football League, Darryll M. Halcomb Lewis

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

Collapsing The Legal Impediments To Indemnification, Clark C. Johnson

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Workers' Compensation—Supervisory Employees Are Immune From Tort Actions, Hank Jackson

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Workmen's Compensation: Toward A Stricter Liability For Enterprise, John A. Payne Jr.

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article considers the situation in which an employee injured by a defective product in the course of his employment can proceed both against his employer insured by a workmen's compensation program and against a manufacturer of the employer's equipment who is strictly liable under a claim of products liability. The focus is not on the manufacturer as employer but on the manufacturer as supplier of defective equipment which causes injury. This is the best situation for analyzing the problems arising from the present system for distributing losses because, where the negligence of the employer has been an independent cause …

Workmen’S Compensation: Third Party’S Action Over Against Employer, Arthur Larson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Advocating The Rights Of The Injured, Benjamin Marcus

Michigan Law Review

When workmen's compensation was first introduced a half century ago, it was felt necessary to cushion the shock in a number of ways. One of these was the idea of a bargain, an exchange, in which the worker, to obtain the new remedy based on liability without fault, gave up his existing remedy, the right to a tort action against his employer for a negligent injury. It is time that the terms of that bargain be re-examined.

Longshoreman-Shipowner-Stevedore: The Circle Of Liability, Harney B. Stover, Jr.

Michigan Law Review

It is universally recognized that in the past two decades the United States Supreme Court has substantially revised the law under which seamen, longshoremen and harbor workers (or their survivors) may recover damages for personal injury and death. One of the more recent and most authoritative texts in the field of admiralty and maritime law devotes an entire chapter, 147 pages in length, to the subject of the rights of seamen and maritime workers (or their survivors) of recovery for injury and death. The introduction to that chapter likens the Court's rewriting of the law in this field to a …

Workermen's Compensation-Third-Party Actions-Employer's Recovery On An Implied Warranty, Philip Sotiroff

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff seeks to recover the amount of a workmen's compensation award paid to his employee as a result of injuries received when an exhaust valve malfunctioned causing a press which the employee was operating to double-trip. Defendant, an independent parts supplier who had sold plaintiff the valve, moved to dismiss the complaint because of insufficiency of evidence to sustain the verdict and plaintiff's legal incapacity to sue. On appeal from an order denying the motion to dismiss, held, affirmed, one judge dissenting. Plaintiff has two independent causes of action, one against the manufacturer on an assigned negligence theory, and …

Atoms And The Law, E. Blythe Stason, Samuel D. Estep, William J. Pierce

Books

Early in 1951 a group of interested members of the faculty of The University of Michigan Law School conceived the idea of a research project, the purpose of which would be to investigate the principal unique legal problems being created and likely to be created in the future by peaceful uses of atomic energy. The group planned the preparation and publication of a series of manuscripts which might ultimately emerge as one or more printed volumes dealing with the legal problems affecting this new form of energy. Many phases of the subject were scrutinized, including the rule-making and licensing powers …

Workmen's Compensation - Federal Employers' Liability Act - Basis Of Liability Not Common Law Negligence, Robert L. Knauss S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Petitioner, a laborer in a railroad section gang, was assigned to burn weeds near a railroad track. He was injured when he fell into a culvert as he was trying to escape from smoke and flames which had been fanned by a passing train. A jury in the Circuit Court of St. Louis awarded damages under the Federal Employers' Liability Act (FELA). The Supreme Court of Missouri reversed upon the ground that the evidence was not sufficient to support a finding of the railroad's liability, and the case should not have been allowed to go to a jury. On certiorari …

Workmen's Compensation - Federal Employers' Liability Act - Coverage Under 1939 Amendment, Robert J. Hoerner

Michigan Law Review

In 1956 the Supreme Court handed down two decisions interpreting the 1939 Amendment to the Federal Employers' Liability Act which substantially extended the act's coverage. The purpose of this short comment is to examine this extension and its impact on the perennial controversy between advocates of the FELA on the one hand and workmen's compensation on the other.

Workmen's Compensation, John M. Cate

Vanderbilt Law Review

A review of the past year in Workmen's Compensation in Tennessee must of necessity take into account any legislative change in the Compensation Act itself' as well as trends disclosed through the decisions of the courts. The modern development and growth of this new theory, that of liability without fault, make pertinent the inquiry. Although a development of one generation, the theory of Workmen's Compensation is now almost universal in application. Under it, industry bears its fair share of the cost of injuries to workers, without any reference to fault or blame or negligence, where there is a reasonably apparent …

Legal Aspects Of Allergy, Doran E. Perdue

Vanderbilt Law Review

Discussions of allergy have appeared frequently in medical journals and treatises' but only rarely in legal periodicals and treatises. In recent years, however, allergy and problems of hypersensitivity have become increasingly important in law. Whether this is due to the fact that a greater number of persons today are actually allergic because of new products and processes, or whether it is because there is today a better understanding of allergy cannot be categorically stated. Perhaps it would be safe to assume that the increased number of allergy cases is due in some measure to a combination of both causes.

The Uncompensated Industrial Injury, Stanley Law Sabel

Michigan Law Review

Workmen's compensation laws as means by which industry shares part of the burden of the human toll incident to the cost of production are reaching the maturity of their development. The adoption of such laws has been wide; all but two states in the union now have some provision by which employees engaged in most lines of work are compensated without regard to fault for injuries caused by their work.

Malpractice Actions And Compensation Acts, Paul A. Leidy

Michigan Law Review

S, an employee, is injured as the result of the negligence of his employer, M; S is taken for treatment to the office of X, a competent physician or surgeon selected by S or by M; on this particular occasion X is negligent and as a result of X's negligence S's two weeks' injury is aggravated and the period of disability becomes one of two months' duration. At common law, inasmuch as the original injury was one for which M was legally responsible, S could recover from M for the entire disability-that resulting directly from the original negligence of M …

Recent Important Decisions

Michigan Law Review

A collection of recent important court decisions.

Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Assignments- Assignment of an Expectancy - Joseph and James were two of six children. A contract witnessed "that Joseph Snyder has sold to James Snyder one undivided sixth of the real estate owned by the mother, Susan Snyder; to secure said interest to James after her death, the mother unites in the conveyance of said interest The said Joseph warrants and defends the interest from all claims." The contract was signed by Joseph and by the mother. Held, Joseph had no estate which he could convey, and the contract, though made with the consent of the mother, was unenforceable either …

Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Admiralty - Workmen's Compensation - Is a Hydroplane a Vessel? - Claimant was employed in the care and management of a hydroplane which was moored in navigable waters. The hydroplane began to drag anchor and drift toward the beach, where it was in danger of being wrecked. Claimant waded into the water and was struck by the propeller. Held, claimant is not entitled to compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Law, since a hydroplane while on navigable waters is a vessel, and therefore the jurisdiction of the admiralty excludes that of the State Industrial Commission. Reinhardt v. Newport Flying Service Corp. …